Million Dollar Audiences: Q&A With Pat Flynn

Foreign.

Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. Let's jump right into it today. Let me start off with a question. What is the lifeblood of all businesses? I'm of the opinion that the strength of your audience, meaning the number of people that you can impact at the.

Click of a button, be it an.

Email, be it social media, be it a blog, I don't care how many, how much attention can you get on demand? That's what I consider to be an audience that is, in my opinion, the.

Lifeblood of most businesses.

All advertising. 100% of advertising is the process of renting someone else's audience. Why do people pay $3 million for a 30 second ad in the Super Bowl? Because there's 50 million eyeballs. The super bowl carries the audience. That's what advertising is. It is getting in front of eyeballs, getting in front of an audience. Probably the best person in my network at getting and keeping raving fans is my buddy Pat Flynn. And I asked Pat to come to Freedom Fastlane Live. And he's also going to be on the podcast here in a couple of weeks. But I wanted to share some of the Q and A that we took together at Freedom Fastlane Live.

Now, Pat was one of the first.

People that I booked to speak at Freedom Fast Lane Live because I wanted to deconstruct his model for getting and keeping raving fans. But even more so, I couldn't wait for a Q and A. And I actually extended our Q and A time and adjusted the rest of the schedule because I wanted to dive deep into not only what Pat does, but what he does not do as a way of monetizing his audience and a way of keeping attention and keeping raving fans. Because I think that Pat is sitting on a gold mine. I think he's sitting on a hundred million dollar empire. And I'm curious why he doesn't do certain things in order to cash the checks. And his answers were not what I expected. His answer really surprised me and they actually challenged a lot of my assumptions. But the way that Pat revealed that he handles his business has provided so much prosperity and really freedom because he no longer has a need for anything. He doesn't ever have to do anything that somebody else might ask him or demand of him because he has the audience, he manages and keeps the attention of his raving fans. And that's what we unpack in this Q and A which occurred after his talk at Freedom Fastlane Live. So enjoy this chat with Pat Flynn.

Give it up for Pat Flynn.

Great stuff.

Now we get to chat.

We do. So we actually. We've extended our time because I have so much I want to unpack. I've been excited for. I know I can't even talk. I'm so excited. In fact, you were one of the first people I reached out to when we decided to do this event, because I literally had a list of questions that I've always wanted to unpack. Unpack with Pat.

Unpat. Unpat.

Unpat. There we go. There's. The podcast we're doing together is called unpat. So, first of all, I want to talk about monetization, because.

The best I know, the best example I can think of, building up these raving fans of people who just connect with you because you're purely authentic with them, and. And you just show up as you. And people follow that, where this world is just craving authenticity, and you give them a healthy dose of that and they get in line. But I've never heard you say, I've never heard you cash that in. I've never heard you. You do a great job of setting it up and setting it up and setting up, and I've never once heard you pull the cash register.

I've been jabbing for a long time. Yeah, you have.

And I'm curious, like, where's the right hook? And I'm curious, where does that fall into your strategy? And if it's not obvious, I mean, you publish your income reports. Everybody knows that. That's a ballsy move. And I'm curious if.

There'S a rationale behind the jabbing and not doing the right hook. I mean, I see the income reports, they go up and up and up. But tell me a little bit about the reason or the rationale.

Well, there's a lot of different reasons why it is the way it is. And a lot of people are surprised when they see that amongst my income reports, which are six figures a month now, that there are no products or courses that I have coming out. And there's a couple reasons for that. One is, for the longest time, I felt like everything was the way it needed to be, that I didn't need to force a course just because I have an audience that is raving fans. Just because I could launch something doesn't mean I should. And I have to be very careful and aware and sensitive to the trust that I built with my audience, too, because especially the space that I'm in, entrepreneurship, Internet marketing, that sort of stuff, you know, your reputation could be severed very quickly. So I pay attention to that. Another part of it is I'm scared. I'm really nervous about putting something out there because I know how much people listen to what I say. So I don't put anything out there that that's not going to be good. And so everything that I've been doing so far has been literally helping people and changing their lives. And I've continued that, and I've learned over time that through serving my audience, not through courses and things like that, but just through free content, I'm making a lot of money through affiliate commissions because I share not products as a recommendation that you have to use, but I just share a process. And through that process, these are the tools that I happen to use, or these are the services that I happen to use or the people that I talk to. If you're interested, I vetted them for you. If you trust my opinion, you can trust them, too. That's why I'm very careful with, as far as affiliate marketing, the companies that I JV and partner with. And I get offers all the time, and they're very attractive offers. And I'm very lucky, I think, in the early history of my online business journey to have had friends who were on the same journey as me, who had become successful, who I cannot call friends anymore. And I can't call them friends anymore because they've changed as people. They are not the same people that I. I remember, and they've just their ways of doing business, and they've lost their focus. They aren't the same people that I was attracted to before because the money has changed them, the success has changed them. So I'm very aware to that because I don't want it to be changed too. And I don't necessarily blame them. You know, we've seen money and success change a lot of people without them even knowing it sometimes. But I'm very conscious of that because I know that I need to stay who I am, and I need to do that for my audience. I need to do that for my family. And. And I actually call upon my audience to call me out when certain things happen that aren't supposed to be the way they are. Like, if they see me going to the dark side, they're like, no, come on back. And they sometimes do that in a very authentic and respective way. A lot of times it's like that guy who's like, where the f is your Wednesday episode? Some people are very passionate about who I am, and I've sort of become a representative in the space as the authentic, transparent guy. And I don't take that without the responsibility that comes with it.

So the way that I'm interpreting what you're saying is it's not necessarily that you're against different ways of getting a message out there or monetizing an audience. There's just not a. There's just not a way that you feel is purely authentic that you would pull the cash register on that.

However, anyway, I've also learned through taking other people's courses how much a course can actually be helpful, you know, And I think it was Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers.com who is very real. Right? No BS. He was like, pat, dude, you need to come out with a course because you're not doing your audience a service unless you do that. And people will pay and they will get something. And because there's skin in the game when they do pay for something, for example, they will pull the trigger. And I think the big answer here is that I'm playing a very long term game here. You know, like Gary was saying, this is a game, and I'm not. I don't need to cash out right now. And I don't even like that word like cash out. Like just the big ass orange or Boulder ass orange is what, you know, I understand that orange, but it's still on the vine. It can still continue to grow, and you don't need to squeeze it all out at once. You know, it can just trickle in. You can smell it a little bit and, you know, still get benefits from that. I don't know where I'm going with that.

But so in one sense, I can see that being incredibly liberating because you don't have to please anybody. You don't owe anybody any favors. There's no.

There'S no. I come come from the circle of I scratch your back, you scratch mine. And that drove me crazy. It's why I shut down the business I had three or four years ago. It made me sick to my stomach and I didn't want to do it and it didn't feel authentic. And when I went in another direction and just started speaking my own truth, I felt completely liberated. And all of a sudden my career took off because I was in line with.

Where I was going and what I was putting out there. So I can see on one hand that being incredibly liberating. Does it ever feel limiting because you have an image in the marketplace and putting a. Something that even though you would believe in, or something that might make an impact, there's a little Bit of a threat to the brand that's in the marketplace. Is that ever a limiting?

I think it can be, yeah. And, you know, I've come out with stuff before, not courses, but other things that some people have expressed. Like, why are you doing this? Like, why do you need more money? Like, are you just trying to squeeze this orange out of us? You know, like, this money out of us? And, you know, it's always interesting because I have that battle in my head sometimes, like, am I doing this for the right reasons? So before I do anything now, I consider, well, why am I doing what I'm doing? And there's a lot of things that come into play. How would my audience respond? And I actually test and validate these ideas with audience members beforehand. That's actually been really helpful. Go on Skype, chat with them. How would you feel if I did this? Or what would you feel would be the. Like, I open it up to the audience, you know, the Factory tour, and I give them the ability to give me some direction, and I think that empowers them and makes them become even bigger fans down the road. So, I mean, that's something I do every single month. I take it. I have it in my schedule to reach out to people randomly and have a conversation with them who are in my audience, just to keep me on check and make sure that I'm on the right path. But the other part of that is, again, like, I'm just thinking about my family, too, because that's, you know, it's a big why for why I do what I do. And I think about my kids a lot, and I think about the future of my kids. You know, take that, DeLorean. 30 years down the road, and I think about my kids, both my kids, my son and my daughter, who are 5 and 3 now, but I imagine them at, like, 33 and 30, meeting together at a cafe, talking about mom and dad and, like, things that they do and things that they liked or things that they didn't like. And whenever I have an important decision to make, I think about my kids at, like, this cafe and what they would say if I were to go down a certain direction. And if I, at any point in time, have this gut feeling that my son or daughter would be like, yeah, that was stupid thing dad did. Like, I can't believe he did that. Like, that drives me. That's a really important factor in my validation process for what I do, because even though I do everything I can for my audience, it's also so that I can Be an example for not only my audience, but my kids too.

I get that now. I didn't get that six months ago.

Congratulations.

Thank you. But I get that now. Could you give an example of if it's ever happened of a time that you were considering going down one of those roads and then you stopped and said, I'm not sure that I want this in my legacy, and you decided not to go. Are you comfortable training?

Yeah, totally. I mean, I do that all the time. So back in 2010, I created a website called securityguardtraininghq.com in a thing called the niche site Tool. So there was this guy who reached out to me. He was also in the Internet marketing space. He's like, pat, I want to challenge you and let's make this public. I think it'll be fun. People will learn along the way. So he challenged me. He's like, can you build a website from scratch in a place in a niche that you know nothing about? And I was like, that sounds like fun. Let's do it. So we both did this publicly. That's where security guard traininghq.com came from, which is still, four or five years later, the top security guard training site in the world in terms of providing information on how people can become a security guard. How did this happen? Well, I share it all on the website and it was a life changing experience to share all this openly because every time a cool thing happened in this experiment that I was running, my affiliate earnings would skyrocket because people wanted to do that same thing. So my earnings for hosting and keyword research tools, which is kind of where the research started and that sort of thing. So I found a market that had a high level search volume, but, you know, low level of competition, and I kind of just went in that space and crushed it and gave everybody what they wanted. Now, you might be wondering, side note, how did you write content about stuff that you didn't know about? Well, I did the research. I put myself in the shoes of somebody who wanted to become a security guard. And I literally called security guards in different states because I learned that through the research. Every state has a different set of requirements. And I called security guard companies and I literally asked, hey, how do I become a security guard in this state? And they would just tell me, go to this website, fill out these forms, where can I get that form? I collect all that information. I just posted that on the web and it took off. Everybody was excited about that. And after that project ended and that project became sort of a Passive. Part of my portfolio, earning a few thousand dollars through advertisements and things like that every month. People were like, pat, can you teach me how to do that? And I'm like, it's all there for you right now. Look how I did it. And they're like, no, I want a little bit more access to you. I want to ask you questions along the way. So I set up this coaching program to teach people how to build these niche sites. This was back in 2011. It was really fun. I had a group of 50 people come in that first round, and the idea was to then share things like homework and worksheets and help them through this process. Video or record the webinars and that sort of thing, and then eventually turn that into a product that I would sell in an evergreen kind of way. Well, we ran through the first course with those 50 people. It went really well. Like, half of them continue to have websites that are doing pretty well. Some of them have offshoots of those businesses, too. And I went for another round and had more people come into that. And I was like, okay, I got the process down. Let's package it and sell it. I could probably sell it for, like, 399, 499 or something, because this is huge value, providing we're allowing people to provide or to build an asset that will make them more money than what somebody might make in the stock market, for example. It's like, very, very high value prop there. And then all of a sudden, Google changed their algorithm. And I was like, man, that sucked right before I was about to release the product. So I worked on, like, okay, well, what's working now? So I spent an extra few months trying to figure out the new system, and then all of a sudden, like, Penguin came out. I was like, dude, like, they keep changing it up on me. And I took that as a sign that, you know what? Like, something is telling me that this is not the way to go. And I thought about it a little bit more. I'm like, is this what I want to be known for? Having people create these little tiny niche sites based on a system of something that maybe they might not even be passionate about, but just because they're doing it for the money and I get where they're coming from. But that's not what I wanted my legacy to be. So I pulled that back. Even though the course was done, literally, the membership site was up, the payment processes were in place, everything was ready to go. I just had to pull the trigger on the sales page. I just couldn't do it. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

Cool. Thanks for sharing that. You, I imagine, get hit up a lot for partnerships or promotion agreements or some way to leverage your audience. I'm sure you're inundated with requests for that. And some of them legitimate, some of them can be discarded immediately. Of the ones that are legitimate requests or legitimate opportunities, how do you filter through the ones that you give attention to and the ones that you know are not a fit right away?

I get requests every single day. I get requests every single day from dozens of people because, you know, it's quite open out there, how big the audience is and how much of a raving fan base I have. And that sort of thing, people want to get in front of that audience. Absolutely. And I'm so honored by that. Of course. And so when these requests come in, if it's for a product that I've never used, then I go through a different vetting process. If it's a product I've used and I like, then I'll continue that conversation and see how it might be something I could offer and actually something my audience would. Would benefit from. That's the most important thing. How will that thing benefit from my audience? It never starts with the commission, even though that's where everybody starts with when they reach out. Pat, I'll give you 100% commissions on this thing. You'll earn $500 per lead, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, but what do you do? I'm not interested in the money. I know the money will come when I serve my audience. So how are you helping me serve my audience? That's, like, the first question. And a lot of times with people I don't know, it's obvious, or I'm just not. It's not very clear what that value prop is for me. So I just discovered, count that and say, no, thank you, but if it's somebody I know, then I'll have that conversation. Or if it's a product that might seem interesting, that might actually help, I'll actually make sure to use that product, see how it might be implemented into my brand, actually make sure that they will take care of my audience. I don't ever recommend anything within two months from getting that offer because I need to make sure that it's going to help my audience by making sure that it helps me first. And so that goes along with another philosophy I have, which is, you know, I don't recommend anything I haven't used before. But when I do recommend something, I know it front and back and I treat that product. Here's an affiliate marketing strategy for all of you. It's funny because with our own products, right, we share everything about it. We open up the inside, this is the box, and we show every bit and piece of it and how it can help. But with affiliate stuff, it's like, hey guys, this will be really helpful. Click on this link. The that's it. You should treat that product as if it was your own. So you're gonna make your audience feel more secure about what it is that you're offering. But also people wanna see what they're gonna get before they get it right? So a cool strategy is to do this sort of unboxing, right, with physical products. We've seen these unboxing videos on YouTube, they're extremely popular. I hope you're maybe doing that with your own products or shipping out your products to somebody else to do that for you and have like a YouTube review or something. But you could do that with affiliate products software. Use Screenflow or Camtasia to capture those moments and show people what they're going to get before they get it. That's by far the number one strategy I use. And again, it shows that I use that product. I've tested it, I've made sure that my audience is going to benefit from that before I share it. And again, sometimes those recommendations don't come with an affiliate program. Sometimes people are like, hey Pat, I have this product, I think it'd be really cool. There's no affiliate program. And I'm like, I don't care if it's helpful for my audience. It's going to come and pay me back in return in some way, shape or form in this long term game that I'm playing.

Cool. So we have similar, but different audiences and similar, but different approaches on how we communicate with our audiences. And I can't help but put on my marketer hat or my perspective hat when I'm looking at what you're doing. And from my perspective, I operate from the place of I have a very specific target for who our clients are or who we work with in one of our workshops or in the Mastermind. It's a very specific person because I take a policy. I don't take any money unless I know I can provide 10 times the value or more. And so I would rather someone just go through a whole bunch of free stuff if they're not our target client. I have no interest in pitching somebody that I'm not sure I can hit a home run with that 10x value. And so we release the podcast and the free stuff just to serve those that aren't a fit and also help hopefully help them climb that ladder so that later they'll become a client. I've always wondered with your audience, you have a very wide net. And I'm just, from my perspective, I'm curious why there hasn't been a way to filter them out by price through to get those that you know that you could serve the most. So have you, have you ever considered that? Has that ever come up? Or is it just that you really enjoy where you're at and you don't feel like you need to change something that's not broken?

It's interesting because, you know, things are working really well. And part of that is in my head, like things are going really well. Why do I need to change anything? But I also know through people like Derek and yourself and other people in the Mastermind groups, like, I may not be doing my best to serve my audience. And actually I know that things aren't perfect. I'm actually undergoing a huge redesign right now, the website, to better serve my audience, to better segment them. And then I'm going to be starting the process of offering courses and things like that because I've learned that that is something I should be doing. And if I'm going to be leading by example, I have to do that right? And I would recommend to other people to create courses, so I have to do that too. It's almost hypocritical if I didn't, but I need to do it in the right way. So I've been working really hard on focusing on on that. I have this book coming out in February which I'm excited about. And it's not for everybody. And everything I create for me because of the wide net that I have isn't for everybody. And I'm doing exactly what you're saying. So I'm glad that you're validating this new direction that I'm going on. But in terms of the redesign, I mean a big focus of that is getting people to self segment in some way, shape or form based on actions, posts they read and things like that. And I found out through a survey that I'm not doing the best job of. And it's very obvious. If you go to my homepage, for example, it shows my latest blog post and my latest podcast episode that's not really helpful. I mean, it's kind of cool to know the latest Thing that came out, but with this wide net that I'm casting, a lot of times it's not relevant to what people have. So if I can somehow segment that audience, personalize that information. Spending a little bit of money on personalization in terms of not only my email, like I shared with you earlier, but what happens on the web page, what kinds of content gets shown on the front based off of what email lists they're in, clicks that they've gone through, products that they have, that sort of thing. So I'm using a tool called optimizely, putting things into place to optimize. Lead's a great split testing tool, but they also came out with this thing recently for personalization. So different content can be shown to different types of people based on where they're at in the journey. And I'm really excited about that and I am doing exactly what you're saying. I'm just again, a little bit scared. That's been part of the process. But again, I want to make sure I do it the right way too.

So, yeah.

Cool. What do you think that you're best at? Meaning what activities or habits do you think really move the needle in your business and on smart passive income? And what does the team look like if there is one, that fills in the gaps?

So I think my superpower, and I hope you all know what your superpower is.

Mine is taking these really complicated things and breaking them down to a way that's very easy to understand. I don't know if you read a book by Chip and Dan Heath called Made to Stick, one of my favorite books, and in that book there's a chapter on this thing called the Curse of Knowledge. And that is when you know something, it's very hard, almost impossible to know what it's like to not know that thing. And so when you're teaching somebody something, it's hard to get yourself in that person's shoes. But for whatever reason, I'm really good at doing that and I know that. So I take these really complicated processes and make them really easy to understand. And I think it's because I also have a hard time understanding those things. So I figure it out for myself. It goes back to greenexamacademy.com, my lead exam website, that was helping people pass an exam that's like a 600 page reference guide that you have to memorize. And I was able to chunk that down and create processes to help me be able to memorize that in a very easy way. And then I shared that. And that's what later became those products and. And study guides and practice exams. My podcasting tutorial, for example. Podcast is not the easiest thing to set up, although it's easier now more than ever. But I have podcastingtutorial.com which I've been able to break down the process of starting a podcast, completely free, by the way, to have people be able to make their own show. And over a thousand people have used that to create their own shows, too. And again, what's the play there? Why am I doing that? Why am I sharing this information freely? It's because, again, I'm jabbing and I'm trying to be, in this space, the one who people go to for information. And I think that's the big strategy that everybody, whenever your topic or your niche comes up in conversation, you want to be the one people talk about. And I'm starting to see that now after a few years where, oh, you want to make money online? Go check out Pat's site. I was talking to somebody in the VIP room earlier who said he goes and speaks at conferences all around the world, and people are like, oh, how do I get to do what you do? And he says on stage, just go to smart, passive income. Like, he'll tell you and help you figure it out. In terms of the team, however, that's an interesting thing, because for the longest time, I wanted to do everything myself. I don't know if you guys are like this. I don't know if this is just a guy thing, but, right. Like, I was the typical guy who was like, I don't want to ask directions. I want to figure it out on my own. And for the longest time, I was that guy. And I remember even when I was first starting out with my lead exam website, like, I wanted to build out website all myself. And I remember one day I spent eight hours trying to figure out how to move a banner ad from the left side of the page to the right side of the page, because I heard it was better to put the banners on the right.

That is a good use of time.

Yeah. So I was literally on YouTube for hours trying to become this, like, JavaScript CSS expert. And then I was so frustrated, but I got it done. But then, like, on a couple pages, it would be wonky. And then I just was, like, talking to April, my wife, and I was like, this sucks. I'm terrible at this. And she's like, oh, you should call my friend Mel, because he works in this space. Like, he builds websites, and I'M like, I don't want to bother him. He's like, just call him because he'll help out. We're good friends. So I call him and I give him access to my site, and he fixes it in a minute. And then he comes back to me. He's like, pat, who did you pay to put the site together? It sucks.

And I'm like, I did it. And so after that, I reached out to him for these little things here and there. But that's when I realized, wow, I shouldn't be doing everything myself. Like, there are people out there who could do it much better and faster than me. And that's when I found out about this thing called VAs or virtual assistants. But then before that, I was still a little bit scared to give power to people because, again, I wanted to do it all myself. And then I discovered Elance, which is now a different. I don't remember the name. Upwork. Upwork. Thank you. And then I was like, okay, well, let me try this out. So I had an e book for my security or for my green exam Academy website, helping people pass this exam. It was about 80 pages long. And I was told from a mastermind group that I should create an audio version of it. I could just package those together, make a lot more money. I was like, that makes sense. Like, okay. So I sit down. I bought this fancy recording equipment, and I sit down to record it, and it's like three days worth of work. And I listen to it, and it sucks. It's like the worst audio ever. I'm saying all the time. I don't know how it's so bad when I'm literally reading it off. It's just terrible. And I go back to my mastermind group. I'm like, guys, I don't think I can do this audiobook because it's just too hard. I'm not an audio guy. And they're like, ha, ha ha. You tried to do this yourself. You're an idiot. Go to this site. Yeah, my mastermind group and mentors were really nice to me.

But they're like, no. Go to Elance, which is now upwork, and hire a voice talent. I'm like, what? You could do this? So again, this was early days in business, and I was just starting out, and I had never spent money on my business before except for, like, hosting. That was it. And so, again, I was doing everything myself, and I went on Elance. I put a description of what I wanted to do, and then I get these bids back from people who wanted to work with me that range between $1,000 and $3,000. And I was like, maybe I can do it myself. I'll try it one more time. But I didn't because these guys were so convincing in my groups and they're like, just spend $1,000, $1,500, do it, and seriously, you'll make that money back in no time. So I did that. Two weeks later, I got these MP3 files. They were beautiful. I hired this woman with a great voice to do them for me. They were crisp, clean, sold them the next day. I made up the cost. And that was my first experience with working with somebody else in that manner. And then I hired two virtual assistants from virtual staff finder Chris Ducker service. And then that was okay for a while. That's when I was doing all that niche site stuff. So I had them do stuff for me that was, you know, that I constantly do all the time creating reports and things like that. And that worked out okay. But then when the niche site stuff died because of all the, all the algorithm changes, I let them go. And they were great. They did all their work fast, quick, the way it was supposed to be done. But the thing about them was, like, they would never do anything beyond what I told them to do, right? And that was their job. You tell them what to do, they do that in time, in good quality manner, and that's it. And I wanted a team. And it was when I went to Michael Hyatt's event Platform conference and I saw him sit in the audience right where you guys are sitting. He owned the conference. He was sitting right where you're sitting and he was taking notes. He was learning from the people on stage and was right there in the crowd. It was so inspiring to me. And I asked him afterwards, like, how you're running a conference but you're, you're here learning, like, how are you doing this? And he's like, it's my team. They, they did everything for me and I'm just here, I'm trying to learn too. I was like, blown away. This super high level guy. And I was like, wow, really inspired by that. So I was like, I need to build a team. Now. Fast forward three years later. My team is about 12 people. Not they don't work for me full time, none of them. But they each have their own specific superpower that they contribute to the brand. And the cool thing about it is they love my audience just as much as I do. They know why I do what I do. And that's what they really connect with. And therefore they will take time and not even like do things without my permission, knowing that it's going to help my audience. The customer service is amazing. For some of my software stuff, they go out of their way to fix things before I even know about them. And it just means so much to me. And obviously they cost a lot more than people overseas because these people are local, they don't necessarily have to be. But I'm so proud to build the team and have people stand behind me and help push me forward. And now I have a point where my right hand guy, Matt, he's sort of the project manager. So when I come up with a new idea, he finds the people, he gets all the things into place. He's like the most OCD guy I know, but I love that because he pays attention to everything. And now I just am the idea guy. And I'm doing only things that I can do for the brand, like the podcasting, the communication with my audience, social media and things like that. Everything else is taken care of. And it's the best money I've ever spent is on my team.

I'm always amazed at how willing people are to spend money on learning how to do something and then not willing to spend money on getting it done. It always just blows my mind. Pat, may I give you $100 million idea?

Sure.

Okay, cool. I think you're sitting on a hundred million dollar empire without doing anything that.

Violates the brand that you've built.

Do tell.

All right, should we go into this further? Okay, so I have this dream and this was. I read this news report several years ago. I forget which investor it was. Maybe Ray Dalio.

Or maybe Carl Icahn who did a tweet about Apple stock being undervalued. It was Icahn. Okay, thank you. So he did this tweet about Apple stock being undervalued. And Apple stock went through the roof because Carl Icahn said it was undervalued. A tweet created.

Ungodly amounts of money just because of his authority. And I just thought that was the coolest thing I had ever heard in my entire life. Like that a tweet could impact the valuation of a company. This just absolutely blew my mind. And I started to sit on this for a long time and I started to think if Pat Flynn conspired with some of the other thought leaders that you hang out with and that you regularly conspire with or that you at least have access to, you know, a blog post from Pat combined with a blog post from a couple other Flynn sized audiences would put companies on the map. People would give equity lots of it in order to have that type of exposure. And of course there'd have to be a vetting process for what was a fit for audiences who had teams in place. But I feel like there's people in our space, yourself included, who are sitting on kind of a Shark Tank style empire where there are new brands that are ready to be incubated and ready to be pushed out, and they don't have the exposure in order to do that. And they'd be willing to give up equity to do that. And I'm just curious why no one's thought of this but me, it seems. And I just wanted to have an open conversation with you about this because I heard this story and it was like a year and a half ago and I'll never forget it. And it was a huge lesson for me and I wanted to throw it at you because you were one of the names that came up as I was digesting this, that could have that type of an impact on a company. I just wanted to bring this up to you.

So what's the path to $100 million? No, I'm just kidding. You know, it's interesting you say that because I actually have equity in two companies as an advisor because they want, they know that exposure is there. Clay Collins reached out to me before LeadPages was ever a thing. He said, pat, I want you to be an advisor for the company. And I was like, okay, well, tell me about this thing. And it blew my mind what he was doing. And now, of course, it's the fastest growing company in Minnesota, you know, a ton of employees, and just they're doing really, really well. Nathan Barry from ConvertKit came out to me, or came out, not came out to me, came to me.

Sorry, Nathan. And he's a happily married man and he asked me the same question, like, how would you like to become a part of this new email service provider? I know that you struggle with certain things with other email service providers that you use. And so, you know, I have a little bit of a share in that company too. And so it's starting to happen now. And I think companies are understanding that I do have this sort of power and that it's not just about getting the big names who have a ton of money, but the big names who have a big audience behind you. And so I agree with you. I think that's definitely a valid thing. And I'm interested in that, for sure. But I also have to be very careful about who I work with because.

Oh, absolutely.

Again, like before, I have to vet all those things, and it's not something I just decide on right away. It's like I have to have a relationship with this person first. I have to really make sure this thing's worthwhile.

I totally get that. Have you ever thought about making that a consistent part of. I mean, some people have funnels for customer acquisition. Have you ever thought about having that as part of a funnel for making that an emphasis?

No, it's not my primary goal right now, which is why I think that doesn't exist. It just kind of happens naturally. And if it's going to happen, it's going to happen. And it's not a primary goal right now. My primary goal right now is to serve my audience, to build a website, to make the experience on the website as best as possible and to just share my brand out there. And, you know, I've been jabbing for so long and those right hooks are coming, but they won't even feel like right hooks. It's like the person's taking that fist and doing that. For me, that's what I want to happen. If I could use an analogy like that. But yeah, so again, it all goes down to goals. And I'm just trying to do it the right way. And I know that I don't have to react to things. I can be proactive, which means I have to take a little bit longer to make sure things and decisions are done in the right way. And that's my approach.

So I'm just going to put this out there. I think you're maybe one or two strategic relationships away from that 50 or $100 million personal valuation of that company just by putting them on the map. Okay, go ahead, let's round to that.

Like, how much more work would that require?

Would that require, in my opinion, being.

An office, would that require.

No, and I don't think so. I mean, you can set the rules for whatever you want, but there's something very. So I had a professor in college who was supposedly one of the pioneers of this idea called diffusion theory, which is basically the way that products get into the marketplace. And it starts with early adopters, which is, in my language, I call it the grind. It's that grinding of getting enough customers in order to get mass appeal. And if you have funding, then you can grind your way a lot faster. You just have a high burn rate. So if we look at a company like wealthfront. Wealthfront has $100 million in funding. They spend out the ears on YouTube ads, on podcast ads. They spend on everything in order to get enough users to get those early adopters to put them on the map. There's a lot to be said. And you don't have to raise the 100 million. You don't have to have the marketing department. You don't have to have these ads. You just go to the customer store, which is partnering with people, with audiences, and saying, here's a piece, put me on the map. And we'll work out an arrangement of if this ad spot is impactful in this way, it's worth this much equity. If it has this impact, then it's worth this much equity.

That's what I would do if I was building that kind of company.

Yeah, me too. And so that's a very loose idea that would have to be morphed depending on the business you were in or the audience that you had. But I predict that that's kind of where business building is going to. Because it's just. It's so obvious to me that there's all these users out there and there's all these audiences out there, and you can just make breakthrough companies a lot faster if they were married together. That's what I hallucinated, which is why.

This topic of building audiences is so key. I'm so thankful and honored that you had me to come and represent that. And hopefully I was able to give value in terms of helping to build that audience because it's so important. Like, that audience is so much and building those lifetime customers. I mean, that's why Kevin Kelly, A Thousand True Fans rings so true. Even though the math is like, you know, you have a thousand people who are just absolute fans of what you do. They pay you $100 a year. Like just that principle means that you can make a ton of money by being the top, whatever, in a small space, then you can grow from there. And that's kind of what I believe and why I think starting small is a great way to go. So if you struggling, and maybe it means narrowing down a little bit to really focus on those people, and then those raving fans at the top, they're going to grow your pyramid for you. It just happens automatically. That's how I've been able to grow. Not through SEO, not through Facebook ads or anything like that. It's just people through people. Exactly.

Because everyone has an audience. Everybody. If you talk to other people, you have an audience. So in a way, you've leveraged that by just being super relatable and authentic and connecting with people so that they share you with their audience, which is sometimes a Facebook post or a Twitter post or having you on a show or whatever it is. And all of us have that because most of us are on Facebook or most of us have people that we talk to occasionally. And that's an audience, and that is that. That's where it begins. And.

I'm always amazed at what can happen when even a large number of small audiences get together behind a message. And you're the best I know, at being able to do that. So thanks for sharing with us.

Thank you, guys.

Let's give it up for Pat Flynn.

I very strongly believe that if you can control the distribution, if you control the eyeballs, that you have freedom in your business, you have longevity in your business. You can never go out of business if you have people who rally behind a message.

If you have people who anxiously look.

Forward to hearing your message. This is one of those pieces that so many entrepreneurs and so many businesses miss. Because if you're not getting regular eyeballs to rally behind you, not just buy from you, but rally behind you, then you're not building longevity. This is going to be one of the main focuses that we're going to be talking about inside of the new tribe platform. The tribe is open to the public now, and it is more than a place to just get advanced training, although it is that. It's also a place to find investors, to find people who have audiences that you can partner with, to find mastermind partners, to find accountability partners, where you can stay ahead of the curve, where you can form local meetups in your area and have other tribe members sharing their greatest strategies with you, where you can form mastermind groups and people to look into your business, where you can find mentors. It is not only a place for you to stay ahead of the curve in business, but for you also partner with those people who are going to elevate your game, invest in your business, share your products and services with their audiences, and for you to have a think tank surrounding you and your business. Head over to freedomfastlane.com tribe to join. It's open for a short window before we close so that we can get some of the kinks out before we open permanently later this year. We'd love to have you in this initial wave of the Tribe. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you got a lot out of this chat with Pat Flynn. The eyeballs that you control. The distribution that you control is the lifeblood to the longevity of your business and if you are not thinking about that you are leaving a lot on the table. But not only that, you're also hindering your freedom because you have no longevity, you have no permanence, you have no stay in the marketplace. But when you have people that rally behind you, when you have audiences that love and consume everything you do, you.

Can never be out of business.

Share this episode with anyone who might find it valuable, anybody who's leaving money on the table by not having an audience or any entrepreneurs who are just starting their business and need to know about this right from the get go so they can set up their business in the right way. Thanks for listening. Would love to hear your thoughts on the show over at Freedom Fast Lane and we'll see you in the tribe@freedomfastlane.com tribe and obviously as always we'll see.

You on the next show.